


Two Roads

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Cake, Canon Character of Color, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Choices, Dating, F/F, First Meetings, Fluffy Ending, Food, Love at First Sight, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pre-Canon, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 05:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: From a prompt by SugarsweetRomantic, challenging me to write for anyTimelesspairing inspired by Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." Denise Christopher spends a lot of the '80s pondering her choices.





	Two Roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SugarsweetRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarsweetRomantic/gifts).



Many times, since that spring day in 1981, Denise has reflected that she really must be crazy. It had been a surreal day: she had been shot at; the _President_ had been shot at. And she had been stressed about her mother’s insistence on finding ‘a suitable boy’ anyway. Poor Maa. At least her own choice to pursue a career in the police rather than romance has meant that Maa is able to pretend that finding a boy, any boy, to satisfy her daughter might not have been a lost cause from before the beginning.

But Denise still thinks that she might have hallucinated the whole thing. If they were time travelers from the future, couldn’t they have done something about Reagan’s second term? And sometimes, working long nights and days for little pay and less recognition, she thinks that her own career in the FBI seems scarcely more plausible than time travel. Maybe it was some other self who in some other, more virtuous life had found a kind-faced woman whose hips curved like a sacred river. Denise looks at herself in the mirror, sharp-jawed and weary-eyed, with her hair in a severe ponytail, and worries that she is learning how to live a narrow life.

She gets promoted. She teaches herself to knit. Maa teaches her to make her red curry, and it tastes like forgiveness. But Denise still thinks she might be dreaming of a future that will never come. So she looks at personal ads in newspapers, and in the right sort of zines, and she manages to drag herself on dates, some nights. She’s not sure if she wishes the FBI were sexier, or if she’s glad it isn’t. It seems a moot point, in any case. Denise meets bright and interesting women, and sometimes she almost weeps with the feeling that she should be kissing someone else goodnight.

Denise has promised herself that this will be the last first date. She’s getting too old for this. She has a good career. She can’t keep waiting for that one person to walk in the door, or for the lightning bolt to strike from somewhere else, proving once and for all that she was wrong. Two warm, kind women full of fierce hope — there were worse hallucinations. At least this one had kept her good company. Denise checks her watch: 8:20. And no message from the restaurant phone. It would be just her luck to get stood up. Denise drains her water glass for the second time. She’ll give it five more minutes. 

The waiter inclines himself over her table. “Is there anything else you would like?”

“Oh,” says Denise, “I… I was waiting for someone, actually.” She forces a smile. “Blind date. I’ll… I’ll order something in a minute, I just…”

“Of course,” he says, and melts away. Denise sighs. She’s safe enough telling him she’s on a date; the other woman isn’t going to show. This she knows in her bones. And she could just leave, and call it a night. But she is hungry, and she is tired, and she can’t quite face the thought of leftover rice in her apartment.

The food, when it comes, is very good, and Denise finds herself feeling almost embarrassingly better for having a solid meal. She really should get better at cooking for herself, but the hours aren’t exactly conducive to it… or to grocery shopping, for that matter. She eats slowly, savoring her dinner, and by the time she is finished, the restaurant is mostly empty, leaving her safe from prying eyes. Denise reflects that she’ll have to leave a good tip. When the cake is set down in front of her, she blinks, and looks up.

“I didn’t order this,” she tells her sympathetic waiter.

“I know,” he says, and smiles. “The chef wanted you to have it.”

Denise looks down at the cake: perfect layers of sponge, with raspberries between its layers and a chocolate curl on top. She can’t remember the last time someone just gave her something. She’s afraid she might cry.

“May I sit down?” asks a warm, rich voice.

Denise looks up, and her jaw drops. “Yeah.” It is a mere breath, and it is _not_ the kind of first impression she had imagined making.

“You okay?” asks the woman. Oh, Denise could drown in those eyes, to say nothing of the rest of her… She pulls herself together with an effort.

“Yes,” she says more firmly. “Yes, thank you. It’s just been a bit of a night.” She puts out her hand. “I’m Denise.”

“Michelle.” The woman’s hand is as warm as her voice, as her smile. “I’m the chef. And that’s my cake.”

“Oh!” Denise knows that there are tears in her eyes. Somehow, though, it doesn’t seem to matter. “Thank you. Really.”

“You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

Denise laughs; she can feel herself blushing. Under Michelle’s eyes, she takes her first bite of the cake. It tastes like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiring poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken


End file.
